Freedom can objectify its own past, rupturing temporal continuity with the instant

Evidence

It must first be observed that this will is developed in the course of time. It is in time that the goal is pursued and that freedom confirms itself. And this assumes that it is realized as a unity in the unfolding of time. One escapes the absurdity of the clinamen only by escaping the absurdity of the pure moment. An existence would be unable to found itself if moment by moment it crumbled into nothingness. — Simone de Beauvoir, The Ethics of Ambiguity, 24 (#contradicts, via linked claim)

WE have a past. Of course we have been able to establish that this past does not determine our acts as a prior phenomenon determines a consequent phenomenon; we have shown that the past is without force to constitute the present and to sketch out the future. Nevertheless the fact remains that the freedom which escapes toward the future can not give itself any past it likes according to its fancy; there are even more compelling reasons for the fact that it can not produce itself without a past. It has to be its own past, and this past is irremediable. … If the past does not determine our actions, at least it is such that we can not take a new decision except in terms of it. … Thus the importance of the past can not be exaggerated since for me “Wesen ist was gewesen ist,” essence is what has been. — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 1177 (#complicates, via linked claim)

Between past and present there is an absolute heterogeneity; and if I can not enter the past, it is because the past is. The only way by which I could be it is for me myself to become in-itself in order to lose myself in it in the form of identification; this by definition is denied me. In fact that shame which I experienced yesterday and which was shame for itself is always shame in the present, and its essence can still be described as for-itself. But its being is no longer for itself since it no longer exists as reflection-reflecting. Though capable of description as for-itself, it simply is. The past is given as a for-itself become in-itself. That shame, so long as I live it, is not what it is. Now that I was it, I can say: it was shame. It has become what it was—behind me. It has the permanence and the constancy of the in-itself; it is at its date for eternity; it has the total adherence of the in-itself to itself. — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 434 (#expands, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Treating time as a series of nows annihilates past, present, and future alike — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 408; The past is fixed being while the future remains modifiable by freedom — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 454; Past actions become irrevocable facts the for-itself cannot escape — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 495 (+13 more)

Broader Connections

• Freedom requires temporal continuity, not isolated instants of choice. #contradicts (0.88) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Ethics of Ambiguity, 24
• Freedom cannot choose its own past but must exist through it. #complicates (0.84) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 1177
• The past is a for-itself that has hardened into an in-itself #expands (0.82) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 434
• Dramatic conflict overcomes time by condensing past and future into the present instant #contradicts (0.78) — Theodor W. Adorno, The Culture Industry, 118